From 2015 to 2021, Croatia's office for prevention of money laundering issued 389 orders to block suspicious transactions totaling 327.4 million kuna (€43.3 milion), an official from the Finance Ministry told MPs on Monday, state news platform Hina reported.

During a debate on changes to the anti-money-laundering law, the official, Zdravko Zrinusic, reported that the office had launched 3,271 cases, with more than half, or 1,897, “forwarded to the competent authorities.”

Hina did not say whether these figures are higher or lower compared to other countries.

Speaking about the new bill, he said that the threshold for mandatory notifications to the state’s office on cash transactions would now be lowered, to €10,000, down from 200,000 kuna (€26,500). The same threshold is already applied in France, Italy, and Romania, and it is expected that the number of reports might increase 5 to 6 times.

“Despite the larger number of processed transactions,” he added, “the Office does not expect any problems, because the data is processed automatically by IT tools.”

“The law stipulates that for transactions involving amounts of up to 15,000 kuna (€2,000) people should not not be bothered by the authorities, and that is acceptable. Any amount above that is eligible for scrutiny and measures provided by the law on preventing money laundering are applied,” he explained.

(€1 = 7.55 kuna)